He Went Out
by RayWritesThings
Summary: "I was just talking to him." "He said you do that." (A Scandal in Belgravia) Missing Scene: When John Said Sherlock Did That


**Hello, readers. I've decided to start cross-posting some of my fics from AO3 and tumblr over to FFN, so if you recognize this story most likely you've read it on either of my accounts there (Ray_Writes and raywritesthings, respectively). This one was a gift for a mutual shortly after the release of series 4. If you haven't read it before, I hope you enjoy!**

**-RayWritesThings**

**He Went Out**

Was she planning to hang about here all day, then?

John was in the kitchen. He was supposed to be getting their uninvited guest something to drink. Well, that was at least what he'd said, "I'll just put the kettle on, shall I?" after Sherlock had continued to pace and mutter the same numbers over and over to himself with the Woman's eyes tracking his every step.

"Please," Irene Adler had replied, and even with her hair down and damp and her body wrapped up in Sherlock's dressing gown—coat, dressing gown, what next his sheets? She'd already been in his bed—her smirk was just the same. John didn't like this at all.

Well for one thing, whenever Irene Adler waltzed into their lives those killers after her usually weren't far behind her. They really ought to have sent Mrs Hudson to her sister's, it just wasn't safe. God knew why he'd expected Sherlock to understand that. His flatmate was far more interested in the puzzle the dominatrix presented, in solving it in front of her very eyes within seconds for a kiss on the cheek in reward.

He'd already decoded the email for her. What more could she want from them? Well, aside from what she obviously wanted from Sherlock. Which, considering her enthusiasm, might just happen the longer John kept himself out of the room.

Why was he hiding? He was a soldier. He'd been through far worse than this, and he was no coward.

"Right, we're—" John started to shuffle from the kitchen back into the sitting room, then froze in his tracks.

Irene Adler craned her neck around to look at him. "Yes?" She'd had to turn it almost all the way as she'd placed herself in his chair. _John's_ chair.

And Sherlock was in his own, like this was normal, like it could happen any day. It _looked_ like it happened every day, they looked…normal. A beautiful woman fresh from the shower in a man's dressing gown, sitting in chairs before the fireplace. Why wouldn't that look normal?

But it was _Sherlock_ and he- he had his violin for some reason. What did he have his violin for, was he planning to play it? He never just played it for other people. Not for guests, except this past Christmas or to screech at Mycroft.

And he wasn't playing. Not really. Just plucking at the strings; he hadn't even brought his bow over. It was nothing.

Or it was something.

"We're, er, we're out. Out of tea," John made himself say.

"Really?"

"Yes."

"You were just drinking some," she observed.

"Yes, well," he cleared his throat. "That was the last of it."

"Oh, I see," she replied with an awkward nod of the head due to the angle.

There was silence for a long moment. John wished he wasn't the first one to break it. "Sorry, would you like me to move?"

"If you don't mind."

He walked fully into the sitting room, only to find himself stranded in the middle of it. The polite thing to do would be to pull over a chair between them—but that wasn't where John sat, it just wasn't. Where he sat was where the Woman was sitting and he'd be a fool not to think she knew that.

"Comfy?" He asked in a perfectly light tone.

"Very," she answered him. "Are you?"

"_Are you jealous?_" She'd asked him that day at Battersea. Somehow it felt like the same question.

His left hand was clenched, John realised, and it was an effort to get it to open and flex the fingers. Irene Adler watched it all.

"I think I'll pop round the shops, actually," he abruptly decided. And really once he'd said it, it seemed to him a pretty good decision. Why should he have to witness this? If Sherlock wanted to get himself mixed up with the dominatrix, well that was no business of John's. That much was clear. He went to the coatrack for his jacket.

Irene Adler looked to the unresponsive Sherlock, then back to him. "Shall I tell him for you?"

Did she fancy she could break through the man's reverie? John shook his head, his breath huffing out like laughter short and sharp.

"Do what you like. He won't have noticed." He turned back finally to face her, forcing one corner of his mouth at least into something like a smile. It fell just as quickly, as his eyes fell on Sherlock still plucking occasionally at this or that string, his gaze somewhere far away. "No, he'll probably come round asking me to look for more flight schedules." Probably ask him where the bloody tea was, too, the cock.

The Woman leaned back in his chair. "I see."

John's throat felt tight. He resisted the impulse to clear it again. "You really don't."

She just continued to watch him. Her lips were drawn up in a smile, but it didn't seem like she was smiling at him. More like she was smiling _about_ him, like something he'd said was funny and wrong and she actually _did_ see. She saw everything.

His gaze drifted to Sherlock, and she saw that, too. He dropped it to the floor.

"Right," John muttered. He took a breath, squared his shoulders, then about-faced and marched out of the flat.

_Sod this_.


End file.
